1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus that process a captured image or the like and, more specifically, to an image processing apparatus and a program product therefore that correct each of a plurality of images that have been taken under different conditions.
2. Description of the Related Art
For example, in the printing market of using images for product handbills, advertisements, magazine articles, etc. and the business market of producing exhibition and seminar materials, photographs for recording actual sites, snapshots of merchandise such as real estate properties and products, and like things, work of arranging, at prescribed regions, a plurality of images such as images (image data, digital images) taken by a digital camera (digital still camera: DSC) or read by a scanner and outputting (visualizing) an edited layout image is performed commonly. Conventionally, for example, images to be subjected to layout are taken by a cameraman and edited while they are adjusted individually as a user who is an image processing expert checks the states of the respective images. On the other hand, in recent years, with the rapid development and spread of capturing devices as typified by digital cameras and cellular phones and the advancement of network technologies such as the Internet, cases have increased very much that a plurality of images taken by general users in a distributed manner under different capturing conditions are put together into a database.
Among background art techniques disclosed as patent publications is a technique in which target image data is acquired in which the tone is in a target state, gradation targets are extracted from the target image data, and then image conversion parameters suitable for a histogram corresponding to gradations are set (e.g., see JP-A-2003-134341 on pages 5 and 6, and FIG. 1). Another technique is disclosed in which to display a plurality of image data having indefinite image sizes on the screen in the form of multiple, easy-to-see images, the aspect ratios of read-in images are increased or decreased according to the ratios between the vertical dimensions (or horizontal dimensions) of display regions and those of the image data (e.g., see JP-A-2000-040142 on pages 4 and 5, and FIG. 1).